Dreams That Burn In The Night by Craig Strete Read Free Book Online

him of the logs and bushes and trees and rocks in his path. He
fell again and again.
    Natina stood at
the edge of the village, watching her father go out of her life, watching him go to a certain
death. The white-head hawk on her shoulder shrilled and ruffled his feathers as if feeling a
sudden cold wind.
    He put his head
next to hers, and she seemed to hear a voice. A voice that had once spoken to her but only in a
dream, a strange dream that she seemed to recall. "Stare at the sun," said the voice. "Stare at
the sun if you would make Elk Dancer see again."
    I would go blind,
thought Natina, blind like my father; but still the voice was there, urging her on.
    "Stare at the
sun." The voice was like a fire. Each word burned her; each word seemed to dance inside her like
a fire dance.
    The hawk brushed
her face with his wing, his claws gripping her shoulder tightly. He seemed to be urging her to
follow the voice. But she did not want to take her eyes from the stumbling figure of her father,
making his uncertain way into the forest be­yond the village.
    But the voice
could not be long disobeyed.
    In some way she
could not understand, she knew the voice was telling her the way in which she could save her
father's life.
    She turned around
and looked up, up into the blinding yellow fireball of the sun. Her eyes watered, and the sun
seemed to burn them, to set them aflame. Her eyes ached and she thought she might faint when
suddenly the fire moved, began dancing, whirl­ing in scarlet flames across the sky.
    A face danced in
the flames. It was the old one, the one who watched the children at play, the one who seemed to
stalk Natina in her dreams. The old one's face was burning in the center of the sun. His mouth
opened and inside, in the darkness within, she saw her father walking across the sky. On his
shoulder rode the white-head hawk; in his hands he held a bow and arrow, ready to shoot. He
lifted the bow and shot his arrow. It blazed across the sky and struck a wild goose in flight.
The goose caught fire and plummeted to earth. He put another arrow to his bow and shot
again.
    The arrow found
its mark, and a golden-bodied deer burst into sunflame. Elk Dancer raised his arms, his head
became that of a white-head hawk, and he danced and spun in the air, falling gently, softly to
earth. He touched the rich dark ground, and his footsteps burst into flame.
    Elk Dancer ran
across the ground, moving deer-fast through the great trees of the forest, and as he ran his hawk
head seemed to glow with a thousand burning dances. He raised his arms and rose above the trees
like a hawk leaping into flight. Higher and higher he flew, racing up toward the sun. His hands
touched the sun, and he burst into flame and came spinning back down to­ward the green earth. His
eyes were made of ice but all else was fire, sun-born.
    The visions danced
forever in the fire red sky, and Natina stared into the heart of the sun as one made mad by the
heat.
    The pain stopped
the visions. Natina stumbled, turning away from the intensity of the sun. Tears poured from her
injured eyes. The white-head hawk thrust his beak gently against the side of her face.
    His one good wing
brushed the side of her face as if he were trying to cool her, to ease the pain and heat of the
sun's fire.
    She smiled at his
gentleness and turned to look at him.
    Her tear-blinded
eyes saw him only as a great golden thing, made of wind and sky and the fire of the
sun.
    Suddenly she
understood what the white-head hawk was for, why this special magic had come to her.
    And then, as if
night had fallen, the darkness descended on her. She was blind now too. But the blindness was her
way of see­ing. Her own eyes were dim and lifeless in her head.
    But the hawk sat
on her shoulder, and his eyes flashed and saw the world as the hawk sees it, with great clarity,
with the strength that sees far beyond the mountains.
    She ran after Elk
Dancer; her